The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Talking Innovation in Higher Education with Michael Crow, President of ASU
Prepare to unlock the future of higher education as we sit down with Dr. Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, at the 14th ASU+GSV Summit. Discover how pioneering technologies, especially artificial intelligence, are revolutionizing the learning landscape. With two decades at the helm of ASU, Dr. Crow shares his insights on democratizing education and using tech to expand classroom boundaries. Whether you're an educator, student, or tech enthusiast, this conversation is packed with transformative ideas and forward-thinking strategies.
Ever wondered why our higher education system feels out of sync with today's needs? We tackle the systemic barriers stifling creativity and innovation within academia. Dr. Crow debunks the myth that innovation is a solo act, highlighting the critical role of collaboration. We challenge the entrenched elitism in American higher education and advocate for diverse institutions that prioritize learner outcomes over inputs. If you’re passionate about education reform, this segment offers a thought-provoking critique and vision for inclusive, impactful change.
Finally, we journey through history to draw lessons that can shape the future of learning. From the resilience of figures like Frederick Douglass to the educational power of YouTube, we explore unconventional pathways to knowledge. Dr. Crow discusses how informal learning platforms can be structured into formal educational systems, sharing personal stories that underscore the practical applications of these resources. Tune in to understand how historical perspectives and modern technology can converge to create a robust, adaptive, and inclusive educational framework.
Interested in sponsoring The Rant? Email me at eloy@4leggedmedia.com
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz-Oakley, and welcome back to the Rent, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of a higher education system. Earlier this spring, I had a chance to spend time at the ASU GSV Summit, the 14th ASU GSV Summit, held in San Diego. As I've mentioned in previous episodes, the ASU GSV Summit is an amazing, amazing event. You see people of all backgrounds, technologies, any technology you can think of, and this year was no different. As a matter of fact, there was technologies coming out of everybody's ears at this conference. The sponsors, arizona State University and GSV Ventures, did an amazing job of bringing over 8,000 people together to talk about the latest education technologies and, in particular, what's going on with AI in education. So it was an amazing event and while I was there, I had a chance to run into a lot of great friends, some really interesting leaders, and I had the chance to sit down with several really great leaders. So in this episode, I get to sit down and talk with Dr Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. Michael needs no introduction, but Michael is an amazing leader, now serving over 20 years as the president of a major research university and one of America's most innovative universities, really providing a great model of what it means to be a new American university and democratizing education for people from all backgrounds. So it's a pleasure to sit down with him. We had a chance to talk about what's going on at the ASU GSV conference, the technologies that are on display, in particular, the technologies that ASU is harnessing in their own backyards, bringing more people to the classroom through some of their amazing technologies. We also talk about his time at ASU, his leadership, what he attributes his longevity to, and also some words of wisdom for future leaders or current leaders trying to navigate this crazy environment that we live in today. So it was a great conversation I hope you enjoyed.
Speaker 2:But before we jump into that, I do want to take a moment to thank our sponsors. It is because of our sponsors that I'm able to go to the ASU GSV Summit and sit down and have conversations like the one I'm about to have with Michael Crow, as well as others other great leaders that we'll have in future podcasts, like Laura Ibsen from Ellucian or Paul LeBlanc from Southern New Hampshire University. Our sponsors really provide us the opportunity to do these kinds of things and to bring these leaders to you. So please join me in helping me thank REAP Education. Reap is doing amazing work at helping institutions and states and regions across the country re-engage with lost learners learners who have some college but no credential. Of course, arizona State University is one of our sponsors and I want to thank them for their amazing support.
Speaker 2:Open Classrooms Open Classrooms is bringing online apprenticeship models to people throughout the country. Ellucian Ellucian is bringing their technology solutions to colleges and universities across the country and helping them become more streamlined and create a better student experience. Alliant International University Alliant is providing some amazing graduate-level programs to professionals throughout the country, helping them get engaged with the workforce and doing an amazing job of keeping the costs low for those graduate students. Southern New Hampshire University Southern New Hampshire is doing amazing work at innovating to reach more learners throughout this country. Education Strategy Group ESG ESG is providing solutions to institutions, to states, to cities and regions throughout the country, helping them create a closer relationship between education and the workforce.
Speaker 2:I also want to thank BrandEd. Branded is providing some unique education experiences with some of America's most iconic brands. Academic Partnerships is providing solutions to colleges and universities throughout the country, helping them create and grow online programs so that they can reach more learners. And College Futures Foundation to colleges and universities throughout the country, helping them create and grow online programs so that they can reach more learners. And College Futures Foundation. College Futures Foundation is a private foundation here in California ensuring that underserved learners here in California have access to economic mobility through the lever of great post-secondary experiences.
Speaker 2:So I want to thank all of our sponsors for making the rant possible. If you're interested in becoming a sponsor, feel free and shoot me a note at Eloy at fourleggedmediacom. I'll put that email address in the comment section of this podcast. So with that backdrop, please join me in my conversation with Dr Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. Enjoy the interview, michael. Welcome to the RENT Podcast. Happy to be here. So we're here in San Diego at ASU GSV another GSV summit. This is the 14th year of the summit. Hard to believe that much time has gone by. Is the 14th year of the summit? Hard to believe that much time has gone by? What has surprised you? What have been some of your biggest surprises over the years as you come to the summits year after year? And what's different about this summit than some of those early summits?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the surprise is how we've been able to get over 150 technologies partner with companies. We've been able to get over 150 technologies partner with companies. The level of intensity of the process of finding ways to move technologies around at this summit has just been really fantastic. And then for this year, I mean I think we've got this air show thing going on which is about artificial intelligence and how all of that's coming along, and so that's new and big.
Speaker 3:We think we'll have 10,000, 15,000 more people just go to that air show in the. San. Diego convention center running parallel with us. So we're very excited about that. I think you know is is, I think, this year I mean, it's also just the nature of this being a sustained thing for such a long time Right that that this is a long haul thing. So learning technologies and educational technologies are going to end up being, like all other kinds of technologies, ubiquitous and continuous in their evolution.
Speaker 2:There is certainly a lot of technology on display here Year after year. Just what surprises me is how much more technology in just one year. I mean, if you think about this moment in time last year it was the major announcement was ChatGPT available to the masses? And here we are, a year later and there's several large language models and ChatGPT and many competitors and everybody's using it, and so it's just amazing.
Speaker 2:So one of the technologies that's on display here is something you're very familiar with Dreamscape Learn, so big display. They're inviting lots of people to try it out. It's a virtual reality tool. Asu is the pioneer in using this learning technology. What should education leaders know about this technology and how is it benefiting learners at ASU?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the best way to think about this is you got to ask yourself why does so many people that want to be STEM majors stop? Once they start so about half. Why does so many people more want to be STEM majors than get into it? Because they're scared off by the way things are being taught.
Speaker 3:It's because we're not able to teach complex subjects like college level biology or chemistry or calculus in ways that most people can learn it and, sadly, the people that are teaching it think that that's because they have some kind of deficit. What we've come to realize is that it's not a deficit problem that we have, it's an instructional problem that we have. So almost everything that we learn, we learn also by experiencing something except these abstract courses. So if you're reading something in advanced English literature, you can at least read the words and you can have emotional connection to the emotional image that's being put in front of you. When you're learning some forms of biology you don't have that.
Speaker 3:So dreamscape learn is a mechanism by which we find storytellers, technologists, biologists, pedagogists and others. We brought all these people together and they've created a story in which you're learning biology, you're learning to be a scientist, not by running beakers in a lab, but by doing science to solve something that you're emotionally connected to. We're using a virtual reality environment to do that. So we've had more than 20,000 people go through this learning experience in their lab for introductory biology, for science majors and non-science majors Unbelievable learning outcomes. So now we're off to the races with biology. Now we're back in the trenches building chemistry. We're back in the trenches building a planetary observatory. We're back in the trenches building astronomy. We're back in the trenches building art history. So we have, like the Eye of Sophia, this unbelievable building in Istanbul, turkey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got to see it on the demo.
Speaker 3:Yeah which has been a church and a mosque, and et cetera, et cetera. So we have just an unbelievable tool to enhance learning outcomes.
Speaker 2:You mentioned the art history demonstration. I got a chance to witness it when I was in Tempe not too long ago, visiting the campus, and it was just amazing to me how the models of the artwork are right in front of your face and you can see it in 3D. You can spin it around, you can see all angles.
Speaker 3:You can move up and down. You can move up and down. You can be in even with some of the spiritual projections that people wanted this language and this art to project. You can be there with the lighting to see what was intended.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think it's amazing. The technology has come a long way and obviously VR is not something that just a handful of people use. It's becoming ubiquitous, and so I think it's a great way to expose learners who don't have access to those kinds of labs, those kinds of classrooms. A lot of students get a chance to go abroad and visit those, but most don't. But most don't, so how do you get them?
Speaker 3:there, yeah. So not only that, but it also changes the learning itself. You can read every book that you ever want to read about the evolution of the early church or the evolution of the transition in Turkey from Christianity to Islam, but until you see this building not just by standing on the floor and looking around, but being embedded in the building and flying around the building and you become emotionally attached to that. But the other thing is it's more than just seeing things. You're an actual scientist solving a problem.
Speaker 2:Right, right. No, I think you guys are definitely onto something and I know a lot of people are seeing dreamscape in action here at ASU GSV Summit, so hopefully higher ed leaders can take a look at this technology and think about how they can incorporate it Well, I mean I think what it's done for us is.
Speaker 3:what we've seen is that in the biology we're seeing up to a 40% learning outcome enhancement, as measured in the lab, and then two grade levels improvement in the course itself, and then many people who have difficulty really getting into science they've just overcome that. It's viewed by this learning generation as hands-on. It's viewed as emotionally engaging. It's viewed as what we call education through exploration. You become an actual explorer, solving these problems.
Speaker 2:We just hit a little bit on ASU itself. You yourself, you're in what your 22nd year Right as president of Arizona State University. It seems like just yesterday you got there, but it's been 22 years. That's a long tenure for any president, particularly a top tier research university president. What do you attribute your longevity and your success to?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I think that what we have at ASU is a culture trying to do something.
Speaker 3:So we're trying to build what we call the new American university model, and that's a university that's very, very accessible, yet also very research intensive or very high level of competitive excellence on the part of our faculty. And I think that once the faculty saw that objective and became connected to that objective and then were empowered to be designers for that objective, then that gave an opportunity for leadership to be focused on something other than the normal fights that go on within academia. And that is so. We have arguments and we have discussions and we have debates, but it's not about that stuff. It's about, well, how do we achieve more retention, how do we educate more people, how do we help produce more English majors or more STEM majors from every family background? How do we do those things? And so I think that longevity is a function of that, the purpose, the purpose, and I think also you know the kind of approach. This would surprise some people, but we're in a very very creative modality.
Speaker 3:We don't lead by some management textbook or management you know we lead by design objectives, so how can we design and build something that's better and a lot of people get behind that? They just want to be behind that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting. You mentioned the creativity aspect, and that's certainly something I've noticed from your team, who I've had a chance to interact with. Many folks in your team. They're all driven by the freedom to create, the freedom to think, the freedom to innovate, and that's certainly something that we teach in our colleges and universities. We encourage our learners to innovate, to think differently, yet our own internal processes in higher education fail to allow for that kind of creativity. What do you think is a disconnect?
Speaker 3:The disconnect is that we think that innovation is the intellectual creativity of a single individual only, and so we focus on that. So can we think that innovation is the intellectual creativity of a single individual only, and so we focus on that.
Speaker 3:So can we help that faculty member to be creative or that student to be creative, and they don't realize that in fact you don't want to limit creativity in any way. You want to be creatively evolving new kinds of ways to teach, new ways to organize knowledge, new knowledge to produce, and not just reductionistic scientific knowledge, but whole new ways to think about. New knowledge to produce, and not just reductionistic scientific knowledge, but whole new ways to think about really complex things.
Speaker 3:And so what happens in institutions is that there's no focus on the outcome of the entire institution to the extent that they worry about it, the way that you would worry about trying to make something more efficient. So if you had a hospital and you had high death rates in your hospital, you'd do everything you possibly could. If you have a university and you have high non-graduation rates, people think the students are just and so there's no responsibility. So universities, because they don't take responsibility, and they also I don't know what the word is for this, but there's sort of a little cheesiness to this where, basically, if you can admit only students who are highly qualified in the particular way that a university teaches, and then you teach them and they do very well, you call that a success and that is a success, but it's a very limited success. Right.
Speaker 3:So, with a person like that, you probably should have found some whole other way to give them a whole new set of perspectives, not just further iterations of their existing learning perspective, and then that also means then that you're not admitting all the other types of learners and all the other types of intelligence, and so we have insufficient social measurement and social accountability for what these universities are doing, and we just need a lot more of that. And all of that then requires innovation.
Speaker 2:Well, I tell you, this has been a pet peeve of mine for years. I've ranted about it on this podcast, I've ranted about it in front of legislatures, in front of everybody I can talk to. But I mean, you look at the news today and the news over the last week. The psyche in America is still dominated by the most rejective universities in this country, the most expensive, the places where there's only opportunity for the few and the fortunate. We live here in California, in my day job, we're doing economic mobility and return on investment analysis and, of course, if you just took the raw numbers, places like Stanford come to the top, but they allow so few students in that it makes very little economic dent in the state of California.
Speaker 3:So we have allowed ourselves to become lazy, and so Stanford is a great university. Its undergraduate school is an elite honors college. Well, there's a fantastic honors college at lots of public universities also. Only at Stanford. They don't have other undergraduate students beyond the honors college. But at a public university you do. Now in California some of the publics have become Honors Colleges. That's fine, so long as that's what they're seen as If those are seen as something other than an Honors College.
Speaker 3:It's just a place for intensive learning by people who are interested in and conducive to that kind of intensive learning. Not everyone is, and that's not the only way to become college capable or to become college educated. There's lots of ways to become college educated, but what we've done is we. I have this thing like we've never thrown off the mantle of our British heritage in the design of the United States higher education institutions, and that is that, at the end of the day, the institutions are, in fact, elitist in their orientation, and that is unfortunate.
Speaker 3:That's unbelievably unfortunate and we just keep. There's no bad players. It's not like a malicious thing, it's a cultural thing.
Speaker 3:So we don't realize that we should have 30 different types of fantastic colleges. We should have people going to the community colleges throughout their entire life, coming back to the university. We should have honors colleges like Stanford and Berkeley. We should have honors colleges at Cal State, northridge. We should have all these places for all these different types of learners and to think somehow that and if you look back through history, yeah, those honors college kids go on to do certain things, but they're not the people that go on to do everything, to make everything happen, far from it. So what we have are different kinds of learners, just like we need, to be capable of doing different kinds of things, just like we need.
Speaker 3:And we shouldn't have a hierarchy that is derivative of inputs. We should have a hierarchy derivative of outputs and impacts, and if we were measuring things fairly, we would do a lot more of that. We would measure, like, well, who produced all the people that are running this nuclear power plant over here? Right? And so it's an unfortunate vestige of our British and Northwestern European heritage that we, but particularly British, that we have become really focused on success through scarcity and success through exclusion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more in that sort of disease that was passed on to us still exists.
Speaker 3:We will win over it in the long run. But it will never be the case that there aren't great honors colleges for certain kinds of learners. Nor should there. They should always be there. But when somebody is looking at Harvard University, they should see Harvard College in Harvard University as this honors college, surrounded by some fantastic graduate schools, with a massive medical school and hospital research complex also attached to that university, serving all these functions. But they're not serving a function of educating highly qualified undergraduate students who are not honor students. They're not performing that function. So someone else that takes on that function shouldn't be denigrated because they take on that function and they are Well.
Speaker 2:as a matter of fact, they should be valued for what they do. They create the greatest economic lift for the country.
Speaker 3:And it may be that more investments there would give the country more net benefits than other things.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you my last rant about my pet peeve is the one part of our higher ed system that is definitely not British is the community college Right.
Speaker 3:That's very.
Speaker 2:American, that's very American, created to serve the needs of all the returning vets by and large. But it's interesting how that British mentality, that disease of wanting to be more elite, creeps into even the community colleges.
Speaker 3:Well, because the leaders of the community colleges then themselves say well, well, now we should be giving bachelor's degrees and maybe someday we can grow up to be a university, and then maybe we can become a research university, as if that's an evolutionary pattern instead of exactly the word. So Tom Hanks wrote this fantastic editorial about being trained at a community college Diablo.
Speaker 2:Valley College, exactly Diablo Valley.
Speaker 3:College. Exactly so. He attributed all of his success as an actor, beyond his personal capabilities, to the teachers that he had at that community college. And so that community college just think of the name it's a beautiful name the Community College. It is the college that is education after high school college. It is the college that you go to whenever you have something that you need to know Now. It can help you to complete a degree. It can help you to go on to a university. It can help you be trained to do a particular job.
Speaker 3:It can be a place where you can go to learn something that you just want to learn, and it's available to everyone. There's no entry requirements and there's a very low cost. And so that institution itself has been made much less culturally important by assigning it to the same social hierarchy, and that is close to a fatal error. That is one of the biggest negative outcomes of this hierarchy of higher education. So why wouldn't a community college be a thing that everybody was connected to in some way at multiple points in their life, and its transactions were very simple.
Speaker 3:You're moving some new factories to San Diego, here where we're sitting, and so you need to train up a bunch of people, and that's where they go. The military says they need extra training in artificial intelligence. Okay, we need five courses in artificial intelligence. You go to the community college and you set up those five courses. Or the kid has a job taking care of a sick parent and they want to go to the university, but the university costs a lot of money. So you can get your first couple of years, all your basic education, at the community college, so you go there, and so the community college should be viewed as a core level, deep community asset.
Speaker 3:And it gets assigned to, and then they become obsessed with attempting to change their own status.
Speaker 2:The mission is great in and of itself. Just focus on the mission.
Speaker 3:I mean, but for the mission, I wouldn't be here talking to you. So the mission is unbelievably important. It's also a way to solve other kinds of things. So not everybody needs to go to college, not everybody has to go to college, but everybody has to have access to learning, opportunities to advance their family, take care of their health, get a new job, go on to college or university if they want to do that.
Speaker 3:In fact, we mix up all these words, and so I'm glad they're called community colleges, because they help you then go to the university if you want to, and then in some ways it's sad Now it doesn't mean that the system isn't working and that lots of people aren't benefiting.
Speaker 3:I mean, our country is unbelievably more educated than it ever was. We've achieved more things than anyone could ever imagine. We've produced millions of graduates from the community colleges with associate's degrees and pathways to the universities. It has become this unbelievable thing in so many ways, but it is made fun of. There was a movie maybe it was even called Community College or something but there was a movie that Tom Hanks was in and it was about community college students and I just found it to be. It was a nice movie, but I also found it to be sort of furthering this notion that somehow that- it's just sort of an extension of high school.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the goof-offs or something went to community college, which wasn't the case.
Speaker 2:I guess I'm one of those goof-offs. So lots of young leaders in colleges and universities today, you know, bringing their own perspective on leadership, bringing their own perspective from their own generations. Leadership bring their own perspective from their own generations and you know many of them have gone through a much different experience than perhaps you and I went through when we were coming through higher education. What advice would you have for them in this environment, given the need to continue to innovate and continue to push back and continue to open up access?
Speaker 2:in an environment where you know between the political rhetoric and the rhetoric on the ground. It's very confusing for voters.
Speaker 3:So to me, I don't think that people I meet people all the time and they'll tell me that they're, you know, they're like a dean or a vice president, or they want to become a leader down the road.
Speaker 3:And then I listen to them and I can tell they don't understand history. They don't understand. So if you don't understand American history, if you don't understand how we got to where we are, all the hills that we've climbed and all the hills we've fallen off of and then back up again, and how we got up to where we are in this mountain, if you don't understand what it took to get there, then you're not going to be able to figure out how to innovate. So there's a few books out there. There's this one historian, william Manchester.
Speaker 3:So he wrote this fabulous book on the history of the United States between 1932 and 1972, called the Glory and the Dream.
Speaker 3:And when you read that book, which starts in the Depression and goes all the way to the end of the Vietnam War, or just about to the end of the Vietnam War, you realize what's actually involved. You realize how complicated the country really is, how all these things that we're struggling with now we've been struggling with these things forever and how much progress we've made from where we were. But then also, what's the root of some of these problems that we're dealing with? I'm not talking about just problems of bigotry or social biases. I'm not talking just about that, I'm talking about what does it take? What does it take to get through the Depression, win World War II, build the economy, move the country forward, diversify the, and. So if you don't understand that and if you also don't understand the founding of the country, so there's another book called 1776, which just is one year January 1, 1776, december 31, 1776. Everything that was going on and you just read it and you're like, oh, my job is simple, my job is easy.
Speaker 3:Or if you read I read a couple of biographies recently that you read them and you just realize how ignorant we all are, Right, Our teachers didn't really give us the full thing. So there's this new biography on Frederick Douglass Right, Unbelievable, I mean. You're just so inspired in just reading it and you become inspired to be a higher education leader and you're also humbled by a guy like Douglass, because so Douglass could only be taught how to read under penalty of death by some lady that took some pity on him and taught him how to read. And then he becomes one of the greatest orators in American history. Or I just ask your viewers to watch Daniel Day-Lewis play Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln movie trying to get the 13th Amendment through Congress, through the House. Actually, that already passed the Senate Right. Just what was involved in that.
Speaker 3:And then don't ever complain about anything you're ever doing again, and then at the end of that he's killed by embittered, racist assassins, and so, whatever you're worrying about, just get over it and understand that all progress is a function of exactly where we're sitting right now and everything that was achieved before you. If you don't understand those achievements before you, then you don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, there is no history without chaos and conflict, and it's just, I mean, we're fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to build on that history. Yes, I mean we're fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to build on that history, but to act like things are so hard today we've overcome so much more.
Speaker 3:Yes, much more.
Speaker 2:Well, look, let me ask you just a few last questions as we begin to wrap up. I've always enjoyed your impatience with the higher education horse manure to those of us who've been around a few times, have experienced over the years. Based on all of your experience your time at Columbia, your time at ASU if there's one thing that you could change that would make higher education deliver on the promise that most people think is part of higher education, what would that be?
Speaker 3:Move away from all measurements of anything associated with an input and focus only on all measurements of things related to outcomes. So who did you produce? What did they do? How did you impact outcomes? Did you produce teachers who could teach better and do better? Did you do projects that actually led to some kind of outcome? Did you really take the kids from ultra poor families and help them to be successful? Did you really help all the children of the immigrants that are here to move forward with the American dream? Did you really give them a chance? And then I want to see it. I want to see it counted, I want to see the impact, I want to see it measured, and so it's all of the measurements. In almost everything else in hospitals they know like dead alive, cured, not cured, safe, not safe. We don't measure outputs, we measure inputs, and so that's the one.
Speaker 2:Well, and I spent a little time on a couple of hospital boards and it's amazing how much goes into the postmortem.
Speaker 3:If somebody dies the rounds that they have to figure out how to the amount of energy that's put in to understand what could have been done differently.
Speaker 2:The learning you have to learn.
Speaker 3:So we don't do any of that. No, and it's the arrogance, and so I call it. The people don't really like this, but I think it comes partly from Plato's logic of the three types of people. So there's the philosopher kings like him, you know one-tenth of 1% who are all super geniuses. And there's the 1% guardians you know who are the people who can happen and get things done, and then everybody else is just riffraff. And it turns out that if we just had a different view and if we tried to understand to every kid, why did you drop out? Every kid interviewed, every kid understood. Every kid has a spider web attached to them so that once they show up at the community college or at the university, they're connected. So, yeah, you got to go away for a couple of years because things aren't going your way, or emotionally having issues, or your family's having some sort of crisis, no problem. Why is everything forced to be done on a certain why? Can't we have a way in which we're focused on our success and the measurement of that success?
Speaker 2:Right and allow for multiple methods of learning. If somebody cannot be in a classroom, how do we bring the classroom to them? How do we bring the learning to them? If they can't be there at 5 o'clock in the afternoon? They can only start studying at 11 o'clock in the evening.
Speaker 3:Yes, or why not be accepting? So go back to the person I mentioned earlier. Go back to Abraham Lincoln. So Abraham Lincoln was using concepts of Euclidean geometry to understand, solving for unknowns in the design of his implementation, of his strategy for the reconstruction of the United States, and so he never took geometry. And so how do we? He just read books. So how do we help people to understand what they've learned in a contextualized way, in something other than only a formal course? How do we find a way to measure learning? How do we so?
Speaker 3:Years and years and years ago, I was at this museum in Sitka, alaska, where my life was significantly altered by spending a half a day looking at these exhibits of these technologies built by the indigenous folks that lived along that part of the coast of Alaska, the southeastern coast. I'm looking at this kayak and the kayak's, thousands of years old as a design. They don't have any calculus Right, but they had calculus. They didn't know how to numerate it Right or parametrize it, but they had calculus Right. They built waterproof suits made of salmon skins that were sewn together with a threading technology and a needle technology that had been built, which was as good as any metal welding technology that chemists had later come up with, but no one gives them any credit for that Right, and so we don't understand that all of us, all through time I mean people have been.
Speaker 3:You tell me I ask any of your listeners you tell me how you would have figured out 10,000 years ago, when there were jokers sitting around figuring out how to hybridize wheat Right, hybridize chickpeas Right. How would you have done that? Right, there was no book to learn from, right, but we somehow have decided that learning is this Right and only this, and that is a huge error. What we have to do, like we're working on a big project now with some folks YouTube and some other folks, where there's billions and billions and billions of videos on YouTube. Right, there's all these things that you can learn and all these teachers that are teaching, and you may find your way, and this is one of the best YouTube channels, by the way that you're on.
Speaker 3:Yeah great.
Speaker 3:So you got all this stuff on YouTube. How do you take that and bring just a slight bit of structure to that and tie that into a possible way to call it possible way to finishing high school, new ways of learning? And then how do you come out of that with a tradable thing that you've learned? And so because the organized learners, they just denigrate all of that. If you've ever used YouTube, you know like you can whatever you need to know to solve some problem. Someone else has solved it and you just go there.
Speaker 3:That's the first place I go to anytime I have to do something in the house. Well, we have, like, this 15-year-old Volvo and we were headed up on a road trip. And then the battery for the key thing Right Doesn't work Right, and so I'm like I have no idea how to fix this and we're locked out of the car.
Speaker 3:So I go to YouTube, you know, and there it is. There there's exactly the battery I need to get, and some guy who I've never met is telling me and I got the battery, did exactly what he said. I don't think I could have figured Well, couldn't even figure out how to get the thing open.
Speaker 2:Well, that's how I figured out how to connect these microphones to this camera to do everything I'm doing here from YouTube?
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:All right, well, listen, michael. I know you've got a lot going on here, so I appreciate you taking the time and great to have you here on the rant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you. All right, all right, thanks.
